


Face To Face With Your God

by ideservetobeloved



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Amputation, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-23
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-08 17:23:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13462950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ideservetobeloved/pseuds/ideservetobeloved
Summary: “Oh my god”, Negan groaned and it was as loud as if he had yelled right into Carl’s ear. “Are you gonna make me count?”Negan thinks taking it one step further is necessary to break Rick once and for all. He's not wrong.





	1. Right On That Line

“Rick, I want you to take your axe... cut your son's left arm off, right on that line.”

Carl had no idea how he would have ever imagined his own reaction to this kind of scenario, but it definitely wouldn’t have been like this. He would have expected panic, dread, confusion. There was this voice in the back of his head, which sounded suspiciously similar to Negan, asking him why he didn’t beg or cry, why he didn’t even feel any fear. He wasn’t scared. He just felt… cold. Dull. Resigned.

He wasn’t even really surprised, as if this had always been the way it was going to play out. As if it wasn’t even Negan’s fault, this was just how it was supposed to be.

The voices around him faded into the background and for some reason, all he could think about was how he was going to go to the bathroom with just one hand. How would that even work? Maybe he would have to have someone help him with it the first couple times; that would be super embarrassing. Who would even volunteer to do something like that?

His father’s cries pulled him from his weird thoughts. It was as if he stepped from a very dark room into the bright sunlight, all the colors seemed too intense for some reason. The blood splatter on his father’s face stood out in dark crimson from the grey of his face, the dark line on his own arm was jet-black against his pale skin.

“Oh my god”, Negan groaned and it was as loud as if he had yelled right into Carl’s ear. “Are you gonna make me count?”

Carl averted his eyes from his father’s face; he couldn’t see the person he had looked up to his entire life like this, tears in his eyes, breathing shallow, almost hyperventilating. Lost.

Weak.

“Okay, Rick”, Negan said and every word hit Carl with the volume of a fire alarm. “You win. I am counting.”

His muscles tensed, subconsciously bracing themselves.

“Three.”

“Please.” His father’s voice sounded broken, like shattered glass being crushed under a boot, a boot that belonged to Negan. He was full-on crying now, on his knees and begging, something that Carl never would have thought his father could do, under any circumstances.

“Please, it could be me!”

 _Stop it,_ he thought, _just stop._

“Two.”

“Please, don’t do-“ His father’s words got lost in the violent sobs making their way out of his contorted lips.

“This is it.”

Carl wanted to press his hands to his ears so badly, he didn’t want to hear the desperate sobs of his dad, didn’t want to hear Negan’s light chuckles. How sick did a person have to be to see someone completely breaking down in front of them and actually _enjoy_ the sight?

He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, swallowing down the bitter taste in his mouth.

“One.”

A calm, collected feeling was beginning to spread out in his stomach, the exact opposite to the sobbing, shaking wreck in front of him. If this was the way it had to be, if he had to lose his arm so everyone else could live and they’d all be free, he _wanted_ his dad to do it. Hell, he’d do it himself if he could.

“Dad”, his hair was falling over his healthy eye and the bandage over the other one was starting to itch, “just do it.”

He wanted to shake his father, to slap him, anything to wake him from the deep abyss of despair he had fallen into, anything to make him _understand_. He _had_ to do this, he didn’t have a choice, why didn’t he? Why didn’t he just get it over with? Did he want everyone else to die?

“Just do it.”

His dad’s eyes locked with his for a second and Carl tried to convey some kind of consolation, wanted to show him that he was okay with what was about to happen, that he wouldn’t hold it against him.

He felt his father’s trembling fingers on his own, holding him steady and his arm twitched momentarily, wanting to escape what was coming without his consent. He caught a glimpse of the raised axe over his father’s head and closed his eyes just when he saw it crashing down.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he registered someone screaming in desperation, it must have been his dad, and for some reason, the image of his mom, pale and sweating on the dirty prison floor appeared behind his eyelids, taking a deep breath and whispering “Goodnight, love”, and then the axe came down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know the first chapter is kind of short, just an idea that's been going through my head for a while. I don't really know where I'm going with this tbh but I'm gonna try my best :D
> 
> This is not proof-read at all, so if someone is interested in beta-ing for me, pleeease message me on my [tumblr](http://weyheytheyregay.tumblr.com/%20) or write a comment on here. That would be super awesome!
> 
> Title is taken from the song "My Name Is Human" by Highly Suspect.
> 
> Also, the way Carl sees Rick here is not representative of my own thoughts about Rick in this scene. I just think Carl would see him as weak, because he has been raised in a very opportunistic way in the apocalypse, so he just sees "If I lose my arm everyone lives, so I have to lose my arm" and doesn't fully understand why someone would be reluctant to do that.


	2. You Should Know By Now

The axe was blunt from too much use, and he could feel it crushing his son’s veins and muscles before bouncing off the bone. He almost threw up from the sickening wet sound it made as he pulled it out of the flesh again, there was blood, so much blood, and suddenly a scream that didn’t even seem human cut through the air, piercing his ears, filled with so much pain and anguish, and all he wanted was to take the axe to his own skull right then and there, because he knew he would never be able to forget this sound.

His arm moved on its own, almost robotic, and as the axe finally cut through the bone, the scream stopped abruptly. _He’s dead_ , whispered a voice in his head, _you killed him_. _You killed your own son._ But the axe kept crashing down relentlessly, he didn’t have any control over it.

_Chuck._

_Chuck._

_Chuck._

Only when he felt the blade hit the gravel beneath his feet he finally stopped; his fingers went limp and the axe clunked down on the ground like a ripe fruit falling from a tree. It went silent; Rick’s own laboured breathing the only sound in his ears.

He raised his eyes to the sky, too afraid to look at what he’d done. It was a clear blue, the cool morning sun making the outline of the trees look like an oil painting. It was a beautiful morning, such a contrast to the horrors that had happened the night before, the horror that had happened just seconds ago.

He felt something smack his cheek, a stinging sensation on his numb skin, and he averted his eyes to the ground. There were splatters of blood all over his pants, and there was blood on his hands, and there was so much blood on the ground, everything was red, and if he looked just a little bit further, he could see a mangled mess of flesh and goo, and even though his vision began to blur, he could make out a small, disfigured hand right in the middle of it all…

Fingers grabbed Rick’s chin and forced his head sideways, squeezing as if he was a small child that had done something wrong. Slowly, as if waking up from a dream, he opened his eyes; he hadn’t even realized he had closed them. Negan was crouching next to him, his face lit up like that of a child on Christmas Day. The man’s lips contorted into a smile and he brought his face even closer to Rick’s, letting go of his chin and instead grabbing hold of the back of his neck, like a bizarre, twisted imitation of a lover’s embrace. Rick felt like he was going to throw up.

“You answer to me. You provide for me. You belong to me. Right?”

Every word made him cringe, the other man’s voice sounded like long nails scratching over a chalkboard, like a train coming to a screeching stop, like a blunt blade hacking through innocent flesh. Rick started nodding frantically, didn’t even know what exactly he was agreeing to here, just knew that he couldn’t, under any circumstances, bear to make this man angry again, couldn’t bear to chop off his son’s other hand as well, couldn’t bear to see this diabolic bat, that had been given such a soft name, smashing his child’s skull.

“Speak when you’re spoken to!”

Spit was flying through the air; Negan’s eyes taking on a dark, almost savage look that made Rick believe that this man was absolutely capable of anything. He had failed miserably; he had given him another reason to be angry, what would he make him do now? Would he make him bash Carl’s head in himself? Would he make him pull out every single one of Michonne’s teeth with the rusty pliers one of the Saviors was holding? Would he make him stab Maggie in the stomach so she would lose her baby?

A thousand horror scenarios went flying through Rick’s head, one more gruesome than the other, and Negan’s repeated demand was almost drowned out by the agonized screams of a thousand voices in his head.

“You answer to me. You provide for me.”

As just nodding was apparently the wrong way to go, he hurried to repeat the words back to his torturer. He didn’t care that he sounded broken and pathetic, didn’t care that he let Negan reduce him to a weak, beaten excuse of a human being; right now he would have kissed the dirty boots of every single Savior that was there right now, if it meant that he didn’t have to lose anyone else.

“You belong to me. Right?”

“Right”, he whispered.

Negan smiled again, this horrible, gut-wrenching smile.

“Right. Now _that_ … is the look I wanted to see!” He stood up and picked up the bloody axe from the ground, swirling it around.

“We did it... all of us, together... even the dead guys on the ground. Hell, they get the spirit award, for sure. Today was a productive damn day!”

Rick closed his eyes. Somehow, he was hoping that this whole night was just a bad dream, that he would wake up next to Michonne again and she would smile at him in that special Michonne-way, and then he’d go downstairs and Carl would be sitting at the kitchen table with Judith in his arms, holding her with both of his hands, both of which were _there_ and intact, and Rick would plant a kiss on the top of his head and Carl would smile as well. And he’d look outside, and there would be Abraham, going to his shift at the gate, one arm slung around Sasha, the other one waving to Glenn and Maggie, who were having a cup of coffee on their porch and… everything would be fine.

“Now, I hope, for all your sake... that you get it now... that you understand how things work. Things have changed. Whatever you had going for you... that is over now.”

Negan chuckled, more satisfied than a person that had just utterly destroyed the lives of so many people should be.

“Simon, David, load the kid up, Carson’s waiting for him. Not gonna be easy to patch him up with all the blood he’s lost already, because someone”, he nonchalantly kicked Rick in the knee, “couldn’t hurry up and do as he was told. But see, I am a reasonable man. You know, I could just leave him here. Take my belt back, hell, my pants are already starting to fall down. You know I could. But I won’t, because I stick to my word, I said we’d take care of him, so we will. Show a little gratitude, for fuck’s sake.”

Rick screwed up his eyes and nodded, trying not to think about the way things would play out if Negan followed up on this threat. How the blood would be drained from his child’s body in a matter of minutes, how he would have to bury his own son.

“Thank you.” The words came out thin and brittle, his voice cracking halfway through. How much more did Negan think he could take?

Negan’s face suddenly brightened as if he’d just had the most brilliant idea of the century. “Dwighty-boy!” He turned around and pointed Lucille at Daryl, who looked like he was close to dying himself, pale and sweat-drenched, barely holding himself up. “Load him up as well.”

The tall, skinny man with the sparse blond hair and burned face, Dwight apparently, grabbed Daryl under the arms and hauled him into a van, right next to a big truck where Simon and another Savior were currently heaving Carl’s limp body up on a stretcher inside the back of the truck, observed by a tall, gaunt man in a white lab coat. Maggie let out a gut-wrenching sob. The image of a gorilla trapped in a cage came to Rick’s mind as he saw Daryl moving around in his small prison, frightened and trembling while having his own crossbow pointed at him.

The doors of the van closed almost simultaneously with those of the truck, like the curtains at the end of a play, and Rick suddenly had the sinking feeling that this was the end, that this had been the last time that he’d seen either one of them.

Negan lowered himself down to Rick once again. “He's got guts -- not a little bitch like someone I know.” He smiled. “I like him. He's mine now. But you still want to try something? ‘Not today, not tomorrow.’ ‘Not today, not tomorrow’? I will cut pieces off of...” He paused for a second and looked up to Simon. “Hell's his name?”

“Daryl”, came the answer.

“Wow,” he laughed, “that actually sounds right. I will cut pieces off of Daryl and put them on your doorstep - or, better yet, I will bring him to you and have _you_ do it for me.” He laughed again, gave Rick a pat on the back and stood up.

“Welcome to a brand-new beginning, you sorry shits! I'm gonna leave you a truck. Keep it. Use it to cart all the crap you're gonna find me. We'll be back for our first offering in one week. Until then... ta-ta.“ He turned to go, while flinging the axe over his shoulder. It clunked on the ground next to Rick’s knee, its dull surface stained with dried blood.

Everything felt as if he was underwater, the muffled sound of the Saviors’ shuffling feet as they started to get into the vehicles, one of them stopping to take pictures of Glenn’s and Abraham’s mutilated bodies, the soft breeze of the early morning blowing through his sweaty hair.

Slowly, he turned his head and watched the convoy disappear behind the tree line, the last one the truck that had his dying son inside. And just like that, they were gone, leaving two dead bodies and eight broken, distraught people, who were only sure of one thing: They would never go back to the way they were.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went over this chapter a million times but I'm still not 100% happy with the way it turned out. The ending feels rushed, my choice of words is weird, ugh, so many things... But I guess this will have to do for now. Maybe I will go back later and edit it again, who knows.
> 
> By the way, I really am in need of a beta, I really can't proof-read my own work really well, that's probably why it was so hard for me to get this chapter right. If you're interested, pleeeeease contact me, either on here in the comments section or on my [tumblr](http://weyheytheyregay.tumblr.com/). Please do it, I'm very desperate, if you couldn't tell.
> 
> Also, the chapter title is a reference to the song "Munich" by the band Editors, the lyrics go "People are fragile things, you should know by now/You'll speak when you're spoken to " and I found it very fitting, but I didn't want to put something that was already in the chapter because I'm extra, so I went with "You should know by now".


	3. Four

Carl slowly opened his eye. While his vision still needed a second to adjust its focus to the bright lights above his head, he tried to make out his surroundings as best as he could. He was lying in a bed that was surprisingly soft, softer than anything he’d felt in a long time. The ceiling was made out of dark concrete, timeworn but clean; next to his bed he could make out the lamp that had pierced his eye so rudely after waking up, and… was that an IV? Yes, there was most definitely a tube dangling from the familiar object, ending in the crook of his right arm.

Where was he? What was this place that was so clean, almost clinical, and had an _IV_ out of all things? It seemed almost like a hospital, but he knew better than that. Those didn’t exist anymore.

Right?

He did a quick mental check-up on himself. Everything seemed to be fine, all limbs intact, nothing hurt, except for a dull ache in his left forearm. The bandage over his injured eye was gone though, which made him feel weirdly vulnerable. He raised his hand to his face, overcome by a sudden urge to cover the wound. Usually, he tried his best to pretend that it didn’t even exist, tried to hide it behind the bandage and his ever-growing mop of hair, so this sudden absence of coverage made him feel oddly exposed.

However, as he slid his arm out from beneath the covers, the gaze of his healthy eye was drawn to the white bandage his hand was wrapped in. No… not wrapped in. The white bandage that was there _instead_ of his hand.

As he stared at the stump that had once been a pale, freckled, but perfectly fine teen’s hand, memories came flooding into his mind. Memories of a deafening cacophony of whistles coming out of countless mouths, memories of a dark blood splatter on his father’s face, of a harsh black pen being dragged across his forearm.

He had to press his eyes shut as he relived those terrifying moments again, too overwhelmed by the situation. It was almost as if he was there once more, he could almost feel the sweat dripping down his back, the skin under his eye bandage itching horribly, hair sticking to the back of his neck. The axe crashing down on his arm. Nothing for the first few moments, just a weirdly detached feeling while he watched the blood bubbling out of the gaping tear in his flesh. Then pain, so much pain, more than he’d ever felt in his entire life, a screeching sound ringing in his ears, his agitated mind failing to make the connection to the raw pain that was tearing his throat apart, and then…

Nothing.

He came to his senses, sweaty and retching, clutching what was left of his arm, as the sound of a door being opened entered his consciousness. With wide eyes he watched a tall, thin man enter the room. His hair was getting sparse, his skin looked pale and unhealthily yellow, as if he had not seen the sunlight in quite some time. The white lab coat he was wearing was the most noticeable thing about him, which made Carl conclude he had to be the doctor of this place.

“Hello Carl”, the doctor gave him a thin-lipped smile when he noticed the boy was awake, “I’m Doctor Carson. How are you feeling? Do you know where you are?”

Carl bit his lip and nodded slowly. Yes, he knew where he was now, although he almost wished he could have remained in his clueless state from before. Hell, he wished that he had never opened his eyes at all.

The doctor made his way over to a little table that had a bottle of water and a glass sitting on it, filled the glass and brought it over to Carl, who almost went to grab it with his non-existent left hand, but was able to correct himself at the last minute. Both of them pretended they hadn’t noticed.

He hadn’t even registered how thirsty he was until he felt the precious liquid running down his sore throat. He closed his eyes for a brief second, trying to savour every second of it. When he was done, Doctor Carson took the glass from him and set it down on the table again, before he started rummaging through a chest of drawers next to the bed, pulling out all sorts of medical supplies. Carl watched quietly and at last decided to break the silence.

“What are they going to do to me?”

His voice sounded thin and brittle, like he hadn’t used it for a long time. He swallowed, trying to get rid of the dry feeling in the back of his throat that the water had only managed to soothe for so long.

Doctor Carson smiled again, but it seemed empty, didn’t reach his eyes. He didn’t really seem like the type of person who smiled a lot, and yet that was the second smile Carl had seen on him after they’ve only exchanged a couple sentences. It made Carl uncomfortable.

“I don’t know that, son.”

He didn’t like to be called son by a stranger, either.

“But I’m sure everything’s going to be fine.”

Carl bit his tongue to keep a snarky remark from rolling off of it; he had a feeling that would be a little counterproductive if he wanted to find out more about his current situation.

“Open your mouth and press your tongue against the palate, please.” He complied and Doctor Carson placed a glass thermometer under his tongue. “Close, please.”

While the thermometer was kept in Carl’s mouth, the doctor took his pulse and his blood pressure, working focused and silently. When he was done, he smiled his weird, empty smile again and pulled up a chair next to the bed.

“So, everything’s looking good so far… How is your arm doing?”

“S’okay”, Carl mumbled, pointedly avoiding looking down at his bandaged forearm. It was still such a difficult thing to wrap his head around. _He didn’t have a left hand anymore_. Especially because he could still sense the limb, it felt as if it was still _there_ , at least if he wasn’t looking at it. Part of him was completely irrationally convinced that everything was just a bad dream and he would wake up at home and be able to laugh about his weird mind that came up with stupid stuff like losing his hand and yellow-skinned doctors that smiled more than it suited them.

“Are you feeling any pain?”

He shrugged. “A little.”

“On a scale from one to ten, how would you describe the pain you’re feeling?”

Carl thought about it for a second. “Four”, he decided.

Carson nodded conscientiously, as if that information was somehow telling to him, and reached for Carl’s arm. Instinctively, his muscles twitched and Carson raised his eyebrows, questioning. They looked like two thin light-gray caterpillars raising their heads.

“Is this okay?”, the doctor asked and reluctantly, Carl nodded and forced himself to relax.

After giving it a quick once-over, Carson decided his bandage didn’t need to be changed yet, stood up and rubbed his hands together, smiling yet again.

“Well”, he said, “I’m gonna go get Negan. He will be thrilled to see you awake.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh god, almost a month of waiting time, I'm so sorry >.< I'm suffering from a very severe case of writer's block at the moment, and as always I went over this chapter a million times, but I don't think it's gonna get much better than this tbh... I hope you still managed to enjoy this somehow!
> 
> I'm really sorry, I'm going to try to become better at uploading... I set a goal for myself, that I'm gonna try to write at least a couple of sentences every day, maybe that will help me get out of this slump a little.
> 
> I hope you all had a wonderful day xoxo


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